“He has come here to die,” I imagined them saying among themselves.  “No one comes here for anything else.  Wait a little, and we will pick his bones.”  They perched near by, and, not to lose time, employed the interval in drying their wings, for the night had been showery.  Once in a while one of them shifted his perch with an ominous rustle.  They were waiting for me, and were becoming impatient.  “He is long about it,” one said to another; and I did not wonder.  The place seemed one from which none who entered it could ever go out; and there was no going farther in without plunging into that horrible mire.  I stood still, and looked and listened.  Some strange noise, “bird or devil,” came from the depths of the wood.  A flock of grackles settled in a tall cypress, and for a time made the place loud.  How still it was after they were gone!  I could hardly withdraw my gaze from the green water full of slimy black roots and branches, any one of which might suddenly lift its head and open its deadly white mouth!  Once a fish-hawk fell to screaming farther down the lake.  I had seen him the day before, standing on the rim of his huge nest in the top of a tree, and uttering the same cries.  All about me gigantic cypresses, every one swollen enormously at the base, rose straight and branchless into the air.  Dead trees, one might have said,—­light-colored, apparently with no bark to cover them; but if I glanced up, I saw that each bore at the top a scanty head of branches just now putting forth fresh green leaves, while long funereal streamers of dark Spanish moss hung thickly from every bough.

I am not sure how long I could have stayed in such a spot, if I had not been able to look now and then through the branches of the under-woods out upon the sunny lake.  Swallows innumerable were playing over the water, many of them soaring so high as to be all but invisible.  Wise and happy birds, lovers of sunlight and air. They would never be found in a cypress swamp.  Along the shore, in a weedy shallow, the peaceful dabchicks were feeding.  Far off on a post toward the middle of the lake stood a cormorant.  But I could not keep my eyes long at once in that direction.  The dismal swamp had me under its spell, and meanwhile the patient buzzards looked at me.  “It is almost time,” they said; “the fever will do its work,”—­and I began to believe it.  It was too bad to come away; the stupid town offered no attraction; but it seemed perilous to remain.  Perhaps I could not come away.  I would try it and see.  It was amazing that I could; and no sooner was I out in the sunshine than I wished I had stayed where I was; for having once left the place, I was never likely to find it again.  The way was plain enough, to be sure, and my feet would no doubt serve me.  But the feet cannot do the mind’s part, and it is a sad fact, one of the saddest in life, that sensations cannot be repeated.